


Black Velvet

by Bohemienne



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Southern Gothic, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Gen, Ghosts, Gothic, M/M, Murder Mystery, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:34:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26334958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bohemienne/pseuds/Bohemienne
Summary: Folks are always disappearing into the swamps of Gautier Parish. Only Hubert sees their ghosts.When the pretty, pampered Gautier boy comes to Hubert's occult shop looking to learn more about the magic his mother used to practice, Hubert reluctantly agrees to teach him, sensing there's more to him than he once believed. But as they start to unravel the truths of Gautier Parish around them, they get in over their heads, hounded by ghosts, an ancient evil, and their own desires.Started for Sylvbert Weekend Day 4: AUs.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & Hubert von Vestra, Sylvain Jose Gautier/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35
Collections: Sylvbert Weekend 2020





	Black Velvet

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I listened to "Black Velvet" way too many times while figuring out the plot for this. Also, strictly speaking this is closer to a genre that I like to call "Redneck Gothic" in which I transplant my Oklahoma upbringing into a second-world modern fantasy setting but blah blah, ghosts, swamps, corrupt small-town politics, you get the idea. Thank you again to V for letting me ramble about this idea and brainstorming this setting with me!
> 
> Do I really need to be starting a new multichapter? For a rarepair that only me and like five other people care about? Hell no. But I'm gonna~
> 
> Updates when I'm able. Also I reserve the right to change the rating on this fic to E at any point, but I will warn in advance if I do so.

Folks are always disappearing into the swamps of Gautier Parish. Constant as the lonely moans of wind through the cypresses and the summer hum of mosquitoes waiting outside your door. Sometimes it’s someone who matters, some councilor’s daughter or a strapping soldier boy, and Jean-Luc Gautier will call in the garrison to comb through every bayou and sugarcane field, but the result’s always the same. There will never be a proper treaty with Sreng, the Kum & Go on Route 12 to Fhirdiad will never not make bored teenagers snicker, and the ghosts will never tell how Gautier swallowed them whole.

But they sure got plenty else to say.

* * *

Hubert trudges down the rutted backroad that runs along the boundary of Gautier land, the mud sucking at his Doc Martens with each step. It’s the fastest path from the shop to Dedue’s diner, but not without its own perils, especially this close to midnight. Even though he keeps to the far side of the road from the marshes, the whispers start to wriggle their way free from the sound of the crickets and katydids, like maggots squirming out of a corpse.

_Don’t look, don’t look._ He knows if he glances through the trees, he’ll just see the same thing that’s haunted him ever since Arundel dragged him and Edelgard down to the muggy depths of Faerghus. But the whispers get louder, turning into words, then into pleas.

_Help us, Hubert—_

_Hubert, please—_

_Please, make it stop—_

“Shut up!” he snarls, jamming fists over his ears. If he can ignore them for just a few more minutes, he’ll make it back to the main road, to the streetlights and traffic that keep the ghosts at bay. If he can just keep from looking—

A car chugs in the distance, and he has to look up. It’s that or get plowed down by drunk farmhands whipping around the bend. But when he looks up, _they_ stare back at him, their faces long and glowing white between the trees. They hold out bloodied wrists, shackled ankles, faces hollowed and drained. _Why couldn’t you save us?_ More and more of them, crowding at the edge of the woods. _Why didn’t you save us, too?_

“Shut up!” Hubert shouts, backing up to the edge of the road as the engine roars nearer. “Shut up and leave us alone!”

Then headlights sweep around the bend, and the ghosts vanish in their blaze. Hubert recognizes that engine now; the throaty chug of the Gautier boy’s muscle car. He lifts his arm up to shield his eyes as the car screeches to a stop in front of him, and the window rolls down, spilling classic rock out of the cab.

“Hey, Vestra! What’s all the shouting about?” Sylvain slings his arm over the side of the door and jams his head out. “You’re gonna wake the dead.”

“Ooh, maybe he saw the Bayou Banshee!” The girl in Sylvain’s passenger seat twists her finger around a golden lock of hair. “Watch out, Vestra, she might scare off the laaaay-dieeees.”

Sylvain turns back toward her. “Give him a break, Kayla.” Before Hubert can muster up a retort, though, Sylvain’s facing him again, with that same charmingly crooked smile Hubert remembers too well from their high school days. “You headed to the diner? We can give you a ride.”

“It’s quite all right.” Hubert takes a step back. “I just got off work, and could use the fresh air—”

“Fresh? C’mon, it’s like breathing through a hot sponge out here. Hop in the back.”

“He said he didn’t want to,” Kayla snaps, and suddenly Hubert recognizes where he’s seen her before. She’d stopped in the shop just a few days ago. Said she needed to prepare for a big date.

His stomach turns in spite of himself.

“I suppose,” Hubert says, allowing himself a sly smile of his own. “If you’re sure it isn’t too much of an imposition . . .”

“Not at all. We were headed there ourselves.” Sylvain reaches behind himself to push open the back door for Hubert. “Gotta see what pie is the special today, right?”

Hubert slides into the back seat. He was expecting it to be all junked up—empty fast food bags and condom wrappers, he supposes—but it’s downright spotless. Figures that Sylvain is the sort of guy who spends too much time on his car. “Thank you, Gautier.” His smile sharpens. “Good to see you again, Kayla.”

Once Hubert’s buckled in, Sylvain puts the car in gear and it lurches back onto the road, and the trees thankfully stay empty this time. Hubert tries to keep his gaze straight ahead, but in his efforts not to look toward the swamp, he ends up landing on Sylvain’s face, and those soft, delicate curves to his nose and chin that he studied too long back in school.

“You two know each other?” Sylvain asks, eyes not lifting from the road.

“No,” Kayla says quickly, at the same time Hubert answers, “Yes, of course. She came in to Esoteric Apocrypha the other day.”

Kayla glares at him through the rearview mirror.

“Going to the occult shop?” Sylvain laughs, glancing toward his date. “Didn’t take you for the type to buy into all that.”

And it maybe sounds a touch judgmental, but Hubert wants to believe the playfulness in Sylvain’s tone is all for him.

A foolish belief. And a dangerous one.

Kayla clenches her jaw. “Oh, look. There’s the diner.”

“I suppose your purchase worked out,” Hubert can’t resist adding, as Sylvain parks outside the low clapboard and stone building that reads _Dedue’s_ in neon. His seatbelt snaps open, and he throws open the door, checking to ensure his faded, holey Sisters of Mercy shirt hasn’t snagged on anything as he climbs out.

Sylvain climbs out right after him. “Yeah? And what purchase was that?”

Kayla storms past Hubert right into the diner, and holds up two fingers to the hostess, who is Bernadetta tonight. “Booth for two, please.” She turns back just long enough to glare at Hubert.

But he’s accomplished what he wanted to accomplish, so he simply smiles and moves past her, to where Edelgard, Hilda, and Dorothea are already crammed into a booth, Dedue standing beside them for a chat.

“Good evening, ladies,” Hubert says, sliding in next to Edelgard. “Gentleman.”

“Hubert,” Dedue greets him with a nod.

“Hey, you.” Edelgard pinches Hubert’s side. “Did you walk?”

Hubert sets his mouth to keep from shivering. “Part of the way. Gautier and his date gave me a ride.”

At the mention of a date, all three girls crane their necks around to peer at Sylvain and Kayla, now whisper-arguing in hushed tones as Bernadetta seats them nearby and looks like she wishes she could be literally anywhere else.

“Oh. Her.” Hilda wrinkles her nose. “Even Sylvain could do better.”

“Doesn’t look like it’s going to last anyway,” Edelgard says.

“When do they ever, with him?”

Dedue grins and looks to Hubert. “A carafe for you?”

“Please. Caffeinated.”

“You should eat actual food too. Your stomach lining will thank you.” Edelgard frowns at him.

Hubert sighs. “Fine. And two fried eggs.”

Dedue winks at him and turns back to the ladies. “And a slice of Derdrian silk pie for each of you?”

“If you’d be so kind,” Hilda says, and Dedue heads back to the kitchen to grab their food.

Dorothea peers back at Sylvain and Kayla. “I wonder what they’re arguing about.”

“Probably the fact that she came into the shop the other day and purchased a love spell right before her date with Gautier.”

Hilda stares at Hubert. “Are you fucking serious. A _love spell_?”

“It’d hardly be the first one I’ve sold for someone trying to snare the Gautier heir. At this point I should be paying him a referral bonus, really.”

“I didn’t think you bought into that shit,” Edelgard says.

“Oh, I don’t. It’s a deplorable abuse of everything magic is meant to represent. But it’s all anyone seems to want.” Hubert shrugs, and accepts the carafe of coffee as Dedue drops it off. “But it’s all anyone wants, and it keeps my rent paid if I sell I little pouch of potpourri with a cute incantation.”

“You are stone cold, Hubes.” Hilda digs at her milkshake with her straw. “I respect the hustle, though.”

“We all must find some way to survive out here in the bayou.”

Edelgard draws her knees up under her chin, and wraps her arms around the ripped red tights she’s wearing under her black shorts. “You doing okay?” she murmurs, once Dorothea and Hilda start gossiping amongst themselves.

Hubert glances at her from the corner of his eye. “Never better.”

He hasn’t told her the full extent of what he sees in the night, though he knows she has some idea. The horrors she’s faced are part of why they came to Gautier in the first place, after all. Not that it spared either of them the worst of the corruption that spread through their old homeland like a plague. _You’ll be safer here,_ Arundel swore to her; _a deep, dark corner of the world where we can hide you away._ But the nightmares seem to have followed them. Wickedness, hatefulness, greed—they lurk everywhere, seeping from the earth like a diseased fog.

Edelgard has suffered more than enough in Hubert’s hunt for the truth. He doesn’t want her dragged into it any more than he absolutely must.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” she tells him.

“I’ll be just fine.”

Before she can call him on his bullshit, though, the arguing a few tables over boils over. “Fuck you, Sylvain Gautier. You already think the whole damn parish is half in love with you, anyway. What do you care?”

“Miss.” Dedue appears in the kitchen doorway behind the front counter. “Please do not raise your voice.”

Kayla’s already shoved away from her table with Sylvain, red-faced and huffing. “Whatever. You’re a shitty date anyhow.” She snags her purse from her chair and stomps toward the door.

And comes face to face with Jean-Luc Gautier, the margrave himself.

“Oh, fuck,” Hilda breathes.

Bernadetta squeaks at the hostess stand and grabs a laminated menu. “W-welcome to Dedue’s, councilor. Would you like to sit at the counter or a booth?”

“Excuse me,” Kayla mutters, and darts around the margrave to flee from the diner.

“Sylvain.” The margrave’s boots click against the linoleum as he moves past Bernadetta and approaches Sylvain’s table. He towers over just about everyone in the diner, his long reddish hair tied back from his face with a leather strip, and not a hint of sweat on his face, despite his heavy tailored suit. “Your absence was noted at this evening’s session.”

Sylvain looks away for a moment, and Hubert catches a glimpse of a futile anger twisting his face before he looks back to his father with a carefree smile. “Heh, that was supposed to be tonight, huh? Sorry about that, musta slipped my mind . . .”

“There will only be so many chances, Sylvain. Do not let it happen again.”

“Yeah, yeah, I won’t. I’ll write it down and everything!”

The margrave stares his son down for a long minute, and everyone in the diner seems to lean in, as if waiting for his next words. But he only turns on the heel of his boot and strides from the diner without a word.

“What a hot mess,” Hilda says, once conversation finally resumes, and Sylvain manages to focus on his slice of pie as if the past half hour hadn’t even happened. “Makes you wonder what’ll happen to Gautier one day, huh?”

Edelgard takes a sip of her coffee. “All the more reason to get out of here when we can.”

But it won’t be safe for them to leave, not just yet. Not with the threats still awaiting them back in Enbarr, at the far end of the world.

But the more threats mount here, the louder the whispers grow, Hubert wonders if there’s anywhere that can keep them safe.

* * *

“Downtown” Gautier, if it can even be called as such, is little more than a curving main drag of old Victorian-style houses and shopfronts nestled in the granite cliffside of the parish’s highest ridge. Coffee shops, art galleries, breweries, boutiques; a secondhand bookshop crammed with paperbacks, their pages bloated with humidity. Hubert’s shop, Esoteric Apocrypha, is wedged between a realty office and pet bakery, and there’s no shortage of tourists wandering in looking for a slice of ‘authentic’ Faerghus to keep him in business for now. As long as he doesn’t mind making a mockery of everything real about magic and reason, that is.

But the next morning, it isn’t a sightseer looking for essential oils to soothe joint pain who pushes through the heavy wooden door. It’s Sylvain Gautier.

“Morning,” Hubert says, eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Might I help you find something?”

Sylvain is holding a cardboard drinks carrier from Crumbs’n’Yums, Annette’s coffee shop down the block, and sets it on top of the counter, along with a waxy paper bag of pastries. “You take it straight, right?”

Hubert eyes Sylvain, the dark circles under his eyes belying flawless, glowing freckled skin and impeccably tailored jeans and a red plaid Henley that looks too effortless to not be intentional. He’ll refrain from making a joke at his expense for now, though if it were anyone but the lecherous prick, Hubert would be teasing him for his comment. “Just coffee, yes.”

“Perfect.” Sylvain eases one of the cups from the carrier and sets it down for Hubert. “I don’t know what pastries you like, but I got ginger scones, strawberry basil shortbread, chocolate muffins—”

“I don’t,” Hubert says curtly. “I mean—I can’t eat them.”

Sylvain snaps his fingers. “Right, I remember Dedue saying that now. Celiac, yeah? What about candied walnuts, then?” He pulls a pouch from his pocket of Hubert’s favorite from Crumbs’n’Yums, and Hubert’s stomach gurgles. He hasn’t eaten anything since the fried eggs at the diner the night before.

“What’s all this about?” Hubert asks instead, looking from the bounty stacked on his counter to Sylvain. “Is this some kind of bribe?” Odd, how in the dim, moody lighting of Esoteric Apocrypha, Sylvain’s eyes seem to glow a warm amber instead of the cool, flat taupe hue he remembers from school. Then he wonders since when he ever paid a bit of attention to Sylvain’s eyes.

Sylvain laughs nervously, and stretches one hand behind his head as he takes a step back. “Ehe, well, I guess you could say that.” His hand falls away, and the smile goes dark, tugging at Hubert’s gut. “I think I might need your help.”

Hubert sighs, and tries not to reach for the coffee cup. “Listen, I’m terribly sorry for embarrassing your date like that last night. I don’t make it a habit of spilling my customers’ personal business. I just don’t enjoy being made a subject of ridicule.”

“Huh? Oh, the Bayou Banshee thing? Nah, don’t worry about it. It was a shitty thing to say.” Sylvain nods toward the coffee. “Go on, it’s not poisoned. Promise.”

“The fact you need to reassure me of that is only more suspicious,” Hubert says, but he takes the coffee and gulps it down anyway. “Very well. What is it you need, then?”

Sylvain jams his hands in his pockets, and paces a slow circle on the dark wooden floors, boards creaking underfoot as he surveys the shop’s wares. His gaze slides over fingers of raw crystal, quartz geodes, glass flasks containing terrariums and bundles of herbs, and the sealed display cases housing petrified skeletons, fossils, and reassembled animal skulls. He reaches the tarot display, and he huffs to himself with a bitter laugh.

“Death,” he says, and gestures to the blown-up poster highlighting a few of the Major Arcana from the shop’s signature deck. The one Hubert illustrated himself, though he tends not to share that fact. A skeletal man dressed in red and black rides atop a gaunt horse through the murky depths of the bayou, gold-foil fireflies glittering through the trees of bone. “Y’know, they say the Gautier crest is tied to Death.”

Hubert sighs, readying himself for the explanation he’s always giving. “The Death card doesn’t strictly signify a literal death, it’s more about—”

“—Rebirth, yeah, I know.” Sylvain’s smile turns even more bitter, and he sips his own coffee cup, exposed forearms flexing. And oh, how Hubert wishes he hadn’t noticed how perfect those forearms look, Henley sleeves rolled up almost to his elbows, a soft dusting of copper-red hair gleaming over bronzed, freckled skin. “My mom used to be big into this stuff.”

Hubert raises his eyebrows. He can’t recall having ever heard of a Margravine Gautier, now that he thinks about it. “Was?”

Sylvain turns so Hubert can’t see his face. “Yeah, she died a while back. Before you and Edie even came to Faerghus, I’m pretty sure.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, she was Srengi, so it’s not like there are tons of records of her or anything here.”

“I see.” Hubert isn’t sure what else to say. Offer condolences? Some commentary on Sreng? To an outsider, the endless dispute between Gautier and their neighbors over the Faerghus border make little sense to him, but it’s not something he understands well.

“Cycle of life, and all that. Something new rising from the ashes of the old.” Sylvain shakes his head. “If only the real Gautier was that way.”

“It does seem rather fitting for swampland. The bones of the dead and decaying plants feeding new life.”

“Yeah?” Sylvain looks at him, one eyebrow raised. “I guess you’re right. I just always saw us as more of the Devil, myself. Trapped by our own wealth and vanity.” He picks up one of the boxed sets of cards. “How much are these, anyway?”

“Fifty gold.” Hubert answers him automatically, but he’s still turning over Sylvain’s words. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting from the son of the margrave, spoiled and feted by everyone in the damn parish, coveted by every girl and plenty of men for his crest, his title, his looks, and at this point, the mere challenge of being the one to land such a slippery catch. Hubert tries to think of him as little as possible, but listening to him now, the cleverness he hadn’t anticipated mixed with the bitter tang in his tone, it’s not hard to see why. Perhaps even he isn’t immune to the pull of the Gautier charm . . .

But that’s far too dangerous a thought to allow himself, now most of all.

“Is that all you wanted, then?” He rings the cards up on the register, suddenly all too eager to get Sylvain out of his shop already. His upper lip curls, disdainful. “No love spells for you today?”

Sylvain scowls. “Hardly. Actually, that’s what I wanted to ask you about.”

Hubert waves the thought away with his hand. “She’s hardly the only person to come here seeking one. It seems everyone wants a piece of Gautier for their own.”

The scowl only deepens, and whatever warmth had been in his gaze earlier, it turns flat and dead. “Tell me about it. That’s why I wanted to know . . . Nnh, never mind. It’s stupid.”

Hubert takes another sip of coffee. “What is?”

“I didn’t know if maybe you’d have like, a potion or a spell that could . . . I dunno. Keep me from falling in love.” He closes his eyes. “Permanently.”

Hubert stares at him, trying to make sense of the words. “I’m not sure what you really think magic is about . . .”

“I just don’t like the idea of being anyone’s pawn, okay?” He sets his coffee down on the counter with too much force, and the lid pops off with a splash of liquid. “—Shit, sorry, I—I just—” He grabs a fistful of napkins from the pastry bag. “I don’t want anyone using me that way.”

_Isn’t that how you use everyone else?_ Hubert thinks, but keeps it to himself. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Everyone wants me for themselves, like I’m some kind of prize, or some—some breeding stud, gonna give them a crest of their own, or put them in the good graces of my dad, and I’m just—Goddess.” He drags his hand down the side of his face. “It all sounds so stupid and egotistical when I say it out loud. I dunno how to explain it.”

Hubert doesn’t disagree. “It does rather seem to be the way of our world, though. For all our supposed modernity, we are every bit as obsessed with crests and bloodlines as when Seiros allegedly first graced our world.”

“I hate it. If I could rip it out of me and give it to someone else, I would. But instead I’ve got all these expectations, I gotta work with my dad . . .” He shakes his head, rumpled red hair swaying. “Anyway. I just . . . didn’t know if you sold something like that, is all.”

He hates that he feels pity for him now. For Sylvain, of all people. It’s terribly bad for business, and even worse for his other goals. “Look, those love spell and potions, they’re—Real magic doesn’t work that way,” he admits. “At least, it isn’t meant to. It shouldn’t be used to give you power over others, except in self-defense.”

“And what if I want to use it in self-defense?”

Hubert shakes his head. “I’m not sure, Gautier. It takes rather a lot to learn. True magic isn’t a matter of whim, or trying to keep people from hounding you for dates. It has deep roots, and tugging on them can shake all kinds of truths loose. Things you might prefer to stay buried.”

Like the unsettled dead. The curse fueling every blessed crest. The dark vines that strangle Gautier Parish, thick as kudzu, coiling and binding them all. Arundel tried to hide them from it, but he only moved them from bad to worse. Magic lives in the tainted heart of Fódlan, and it can save them or ensnare them even worse.

“But . . . you could teach me. Right? You could teach me how to use it properly. To protect myself.” Sylvain wraps his arms around his torso, rocking himself back and forth. Like he’s afraid. “My mother knew how to use it wisely. I just wanna know. I don’t want . . .”

Hubert closes his eyes, and sees the ghosts watching him from the bayou, their bloodied limbs, their pleading, blank eyes. Gautier has a way of swallowing people up, of wringing them dry of everything good before leaving them to rot in its depths. It’s what he’s tried to protect Edelgard from for so long, the girl he protects as fiercely as a sister when neither of them have any real family they can trust. Is it really so hard for him to imagine that Sylvain might be in a similar place?

And then there’s that irritating part of him that dares to think— _Oh, wouldn’t be a tragedy if he could never fall in love. Not even with you._

An idiotic thought. As if Sylvain could ever be interested in his dark and gloomy self. As if Hubert would even _want_ him to.

“Fine.” Hubert purses his lips, and Sylvain’s whole face transforms, bright and eager. “I can teach you a little bit. Enough for you not to hurt yourself or anyone else. But that’s all.”

“You mean it? Oh, hell, yeah. Thanks, Vestra! This is gonna be great!”

Hubert can only foresee disaster, personally, but he manages to smile all the same. “Just follow my rules and we’ll be fine.”

“Great. I’ll pick you up this evening, yeah? There’s a great place on our land we can practice and won’t be bothered.”

Fear traces a finger down Hubert’s back as the voices howl in his mind. _Why couldn’t save us?_

_Why didn’t you save us, too?_

The ghosts crowding around the windows, drinking down the taste of magic on their fingertips. Winding snares of their own.

At least he won’t be facing them alone this time.

“I can’t wait.”

**Author's Note:**

> [@Bohemienne6](http://twitter.com/Bohemienne6)


End file.
